


Flight

by breathedout



Series: Passchendaele ficlets [7]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambulance driving, But the evidence remains, F/F, Graphic violence is in the past, Not exactly requited or unrequited, Nursing, Post-Battle of Messines, Rating is for disturbing war-related themes rather than sex, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 08:58:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17978300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: Outside Lizerne, Belgium: June 15, 1917"I'll go," said Hazel. "We'd only just got started, anyway. With our conversation."





	Flight

**Author's Note:**

> The folks over at [femslashficlets](https://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/) on Dreamwidth are hosting a year-long, 15-ficlet challenge where all the prompts are Janelle Monáe lyrics. I'm using them to create a little cycle of exercises using characters from the three established or hinted-at f/f pairings in the original novel I'm working on. So all of these tiny character studies will be related to one another, and all except three of them will be either Louise/Hazel, Rebecca/Katherine, or Emma/Maisie. Anyone interested in getting to know my characters a little bit as I flesh them out is welcome to follow along!
> 
> This story was written for the prompt "A little rough around the edges but I keep it smooth."

When the RAF fellows started calling out, the two of them were still sitting there: Hazel with her shoulders angled toward her, hand on Louise's arm, her huge eerie eyes so _open_ toward Louise that it was hard not to—flinch, or turn away; so instead Louise had said something about the Scotia car workers to get herself a little breathing room, and was listening to Hazel say—what?

"That's just _why_ the craft unionism model is always going to be inadequate, isn't it," with her pale, earnest little face: talking, as she'd done all morning, like Louise was on her side. "I mean, it's exactly the point _you_ made so brilliantly: as long as there are factions for the industrialists to play off against each other, we're going to be right back—"

Which is when Reggie, with a newspaper, ran up through the rain, shouting about Messines. Our mines; their craters; our creeping barrages; the British had taken the ridge from Ploegsteert Wood to Mt. Sorrel. His dripping, grinning face: the paper turning to pulp in his hand. Hazel, taking her hand off Louise's arm, stripped off her jacket; and held it above her head to shelter the print long enough to read. 

"We'll take Sadie," Louise said. She was on her feet. Mirroring back his breathlessness: an _adventure_. 

"Oh," said Hazel, "but—"

"We'll go," Louise said, again. Looking at Reggie. "See it for ourselves."

"You'd catch hell," he said, laughing. Not believing her: people never did. She didn't really want him along anyway, with his big ears and his girl back home. She didn't want him with her but she wanted him to say yes; _Yes_ like her own blood beating in her at the thought: exhilaration stretched over fury. How _could_ he. How could _people_ say yes to all the things they did and not say it to her. To this, launching itself into being in the cold rain and the mud: a hot, moving aliveness. She planted her feet, and his smile slipped slowly and fell off his face. 

"Louise," he said. "Don't be stupid."

"Come on," Louise said. Hand on his wrist. "Sadie's engine will rust. She hasn't moved in a week."

"I'll go," said Hazel. She was holding her jacket over her head, still, biting her lip, _gazing_ at Louise like—and tapping Reggie's folded, soggy paper against her thigh. "We'd only just got started, anyway. With our conversation."

 _Conversation_ , Louise thought, shaking her head; but she could feel herself smile. 

Jacket or no jacket, by the time they got Sadie started the rain was dripping off Hazel's nose. Her curls fuzzing and springing: studded like with diamonds toward the top, and toward the bottom dripping like a dog dunked in the bath. Her skin was rosy-flushed. She looked fevered, almost, under the beads of cold water. Louise started the car, and drove out in the mud. 

"So," she said. "Look at you. Little Miss Conscientious, playing hooky on her hospital duties."

"Yves will cover for me," said Hazel; and Louise snorted.

"What?" Hazel said. Chin up. 

"You run off and catch him up on the plan while I was priming Sadie's engine?" Louise asked, and then took her eyes off the road for just long enough to catch Hazel biting her lip, the flush climbing back up into her cheeks. Louise snickered, then turned back to the road, swerving not quite fast enough to avoid a rain-filled crater. Sadie pitched to the side, and Hazel gave a little screech before they righted themselves: Louise, laughing, sped up. 

She kept their momentum up the whole way out: _Yes_ thundering in her chest, _Yes_. Jolting at speed over the sodden mortar-gouged Adriaansensweg it bubbled up in her, _Yes_ , radiating out into the grey soaked landscape from her own hot heart, aflight: roaring with joy. They rocked; tipped and turned; Hazel's hands tight-gripped to her seat and the edge of Sadie's window and that, too, fired Louise's blood: rising up in her a kind of a wild, hungry satisfaction at the little noises Hazel made, for once, instead of talking. _More_ , she thought, foot to the floor so that Hazel—gasped—and _Yes_ , Louise thought, _That_ , grinning over at Hazel who laughed, shaky, her terrified prey-beast eyes and her open mouth, little white teeth gleaming wet behind her pink lip: if she looked like that, Louise thought. Turning back to the road; gunning the engine; she took them straight through a crater and a wall of water went up; and Hazel— _Hazel_ —actually whooped. 

"Yeah!" said Louise. She looked at her; looked back; "Yeah!" and Hazel did it again though her hands still gripped the seat like claws. Louise laughed, breathless, thinking: if she looked like an animal when she touched me then I would. Yes. I would, yes, if it felt like this if it could feel like this if I felt like this, feeling—Lord, _free_ ; _herself_ ; complete in a way she hadn't, in a way she never could in the long weeks they'd done nothing, _nothing_ , sitting around camp _talking_ , Russia and the Salient, train cars and munitions, letters from home and papers from London, Fred's mother and Rebecca's sons; getting bossed by the matron and the sisters and reading in the papers how there was no movement, no alteration, nothing changing nothing changing, watching for haemorrhage and sponging pus from phosgene blisters, swabbing floors, cleaning toilets, changing out bandages and bed pans each day one cold repetition of the one before while _somewhere_ , somewhere _out here_ —

"Louise," Hazel said, her hot hand high up on Louise's thigh, and _Yes_ , Louise thought, _Yes, I want_ —but that wasn't it: she was pointing. Louise stomped on the brake; reversed. Hazel was out the door before Sadie had even stopped moving.

He lay face-down, abandoned in the mud and his own blood, his arm and half his shoulder blown away. But at Hazel's touch his foot twitched: and the sound he made.


End file.
